In today's work environment, mobile connectivity is becoming increasingly important. The ability to send and receive data anywhere within an office, school, factory, or other location is quickly becoming a necessity, and wireless local area networks have been introduced to facilitate such mobile connectivity. Generally, a wireless local area network includes access ports that are directly connected to wired networks, such as an Ethernet network. In this approach, maintaining configuration data, performing client authentication and performing other tasks are conducted at the access port. However, such an approach has numerous deficiencies and drawbacks, including elevated costs for network management and maintenance.
To alleviate some of these deficiencies and drawbacks, a wireless network based on an intelligent wireless switch has been developed. In this type of wireless network, access ports are coupled with a wireless switch that contains the intelligence to maintain configuration data, perform client authentication and perform other tasks while the access ports provide only wireless access. This configuration has numerous benefits, including ease of management, cost efficiency, and flexibility.
A potential problem in wireless local area networks having wireless switches and wireless local area networks that includes wired and wireless access ports is the possibility of two or more transmitting access ports interfering with each other. One source of interference can occur when a radiation pattern produced by an access port's omni-directional antenna interferes with the radiation pattern emitted from another nearby access port. The two radiation patterns may destructively interfere with each other resulting in a potential loss of signal. To reduce some of the interference from access ports with omni-directional antennas, access ports with multiple directional antennas have been eproposed. These access ports can choose the antenna to use and send data along a focused antenna pattern. However, interference can still occur in busy wireless networks when simultaneously transmitting access ports interfere with each other. Also, if an access port sends out an omni-directional beacon signal at the same time other access ports are transmitting signals, interference can occur.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a wireless network system with wireless access ports that substantially eliminates or eliminates interference from overlapping signals. In addition it is desirably to provide methods for sending signals in a wireless network that substantially eliminates or eliminates interference from overlapping signals. Furthermore, other desirable factors and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, technical field, and background.